Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source
solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host, an operating system optimized for
running the next generation of applications with Linux containers. Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host provides all of the components
necessary to easily package and run applications written for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 as containers.

As monolithic stacks give way to applications comprised of
microservices, a container-based architecture can help enterprises to
more fully realize the benefits of this more nimble, composable
approach. Based on the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host enables enterprises to embrace a
container-based architecture, reaping the benefits of development and
deployment flexibility and simplified maintenance, without sacrificing
performance, stability, security, or the value of Red Hat’s vast
certified ecosystem.

An application architecture based on Linux containers requires not only
the tools to build and run containers, but also an underlying foundation
that is secure, reliable, and enterprise-grade, with an established
lifecycle designed to meet the ongoing requirements of the enterprise
over the long term. These requirements include mitigation of security
concerns, ongoing product enhancements, proactive diagnostics, and
access to support. Red Hat is committed to offering enterprises a
complete and integrated container-based infrastructure solution,
combining container-based application packaging with robust, optimized
infrastructure that will enable easy movement of Red Hat Enterprise
Linux-certified applications across bare metal systems, virtual machines
and private and public clouds - all of this with the product and
security lifecycle that enterprise customers require. The release of Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host delivers on Red Hat's intent to make
Linux containers a stable and reliable component of enterprise IT across
the open hybrid cloud.

The Enterprise-Ready Container Host

Specifically designed to run Linux containers, Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Atomic Host delivers only the operating system components required to
run a containerized application, reducing overhead and simplifying
maintenance. Because Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host is built
from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, it inherits Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7's stability and maturity, as well as its vast ecosystem of certified
hardware partners.

Security is always a top enterprise priority, but the security
properties of containers – including the ability to maintain security
across a container’s lifecycle - have raised
additional questions. To address container security and lifecycle
concerns, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host offers automated security
updates on-demand, bringing enterprise customers the support and
lifecycle benefits that come with Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a reduced
image size. From Heartbleed and Shellshock to Ghost and beyond, Red Hat
customers receive security notifications and product updates as they are
available and also have access to security tools that address container
reliability and security. This is a benefit Red Hat uniquely brings to
container deployments for enterprise customers.

Atomic updating and rollback through an image-like update
mechanism. An atomic update can be downloaded and deployed in a single
step, while the previous version is retained, allowing for easy atomic
rollback, if necessary.

Container images in docker format can be deployed and run as
application containers.

Certification and support, along with a chain of trust for
containers built using platform images provided by Red Hat, such as
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7 and certified containers from Red
Hat’s independent software vendor (ISV) partners.

Stronger security by default through SELinux, cgroups and
kernel namespaces, isolating each container in a multi-container
environment.

Support for super-privileged containers enables host management
applications to access the host and other containers in a secure
manner. This specialized container provides users with the means to
install third party software and the atomic command inherent to Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host makes creating and running super
privileged containers dramatically easier.

At 11 a.m. EDT on March 12, 2015, Red Hat will host “Transform
Application Delivery with Containers,” a virtual event that further
drills into the real world use cases and value of Linux containers. For
more information and to register, please visit http://bit.ly/1Aigjde.